To explore this question, the study undertakes an analysis of narratives generated through one popular American study abroad program, Semester at Sea (SAS). The study considers the images in SAS's promotional materials, the program's instructional practices, photographs taken by SAS students, and students' verbal reflections on their experiences, using methods of in-depth interviewing and content, semiotic, discourse, and frame analysis. It concludes that the traditional western imaginary is both reinforced and resisted through educational tourism with SAS. The disparate narratives identified are then analytically situated in a framework that considers the constraints under which imaginative labor is performed through SAS. The program's discursive output is contextualized within larger regulatory systems in which it operates, such as a mediascape riddled with colonialist fantasies and a neoliberal capitalist economy in which both educational institutions and tourism brokers must compete for "customers." Students' narratives are explored with reference to the modes in which they chose to consume the spaces and experiences offered by the program. The study thus sheds light on the interpretive dynamics at play when western students encounter the Other.